IntermediateUpdated 2026/10/25

What Does “Not Picking a Side” Actually Look Like?

Rather than standing in the middle, a hedging state places a bet on each side and deliberately leaves its position unstated. Hedgers often lean one way on security and the other on the economy. That is not indecision but a posture that has to be actively maintained.

Four postures called “not picking a side”, on entirely different terms

Posture	What it says	What it does	When it breaks
Full alignmentSecurity and economy on the same side	Explicit positions, specific commitments, willing to name names in public.	Joint exercises, intelligence sharing, interoperable procurement. Because exclusivity is already accepted, the most sensitive material can actually be exchanged.	When the alliance’s own reliability comes into question. The risk here lies not with the adversary but in an ally’s domestic politics.
HedgingSecurity one way, economy the other	Abstract positions, loose commitments, specifics kept to bilateral channels. The vagueness is a device, not an absence of position.	Arrangements on both sides: defence cooperation with one, trade dependence and infrastructure investment with the other, each held in a narrow band between extracting benefits and looking like an alliance.	When either side starts demanding exclusivity, or when the thing both valued acquires a substitute. Neither condition is yours to control.
Strategic autonomyAiming to be a pole that decides for itself	Explicit, but pointed inward: it stresses the capacity to decide for itself rather than whose side it is on.	Money goes to capability rather than relationships: domestic industry, sovereign critical technology, its own reach. That is the opposite of how hedgers spend; one buys time, the other independence.	When capability takes far longer to build than the situation takes to change. A declaration is immediate; capacity and people take decades, and crises do not wait.
NeutralityJoining no one’s alliance	Explicit, and framed as refusal: no accession, no bases, no military support for either side.	Alliances with neither. That makes it the cheapest posture in peacetime and the one with the least to draw on in a conflict.	When you become something either side must pass through. Neutrality holds only while neither side needs you, and that is settled by geography and technology, not by preference.

Coverage tends to use one phrase for all four, but their conditions are opposites: neutrality requires that neither side needs you, hedging that both still want you, autonomy that you need neither. Different conditions suit different countries; the difference lies in circumstance, not resolve.

The right-hand column matters most: every posture expires, and mostly for reasons outside the holder’s control. The hedging row shows it most clearly: neither breaking condition (a demand for exclusivity, or a substitute for your leverage) is the hedger’s to decide. That is why, with hedging partners, embedding arrangements in routine mechanisms beats winning one prominent statement: statements can be withdrawn, mechanisms less easily.

Source: Impactful Creative, compiled from the postures described on this page and our coverage of Hungary’s institutional struggle with the EU and Ankara’s relations with NATO

How is hedging different from neutrality?

Neutrality declines to take part; hedging takes part on both sides. A neutral state joins nobody’s military alliance. A hedging state typically has arrangements with both: defence cooperation and intelligence exchange with one, trade dependence and infrastructure investment with the other.

Middle-power hedging is a posture rather than an attitude because it requires maintenance. Each relationship has to be held in a narrow band between “enough to extract benefits” and “not enough to look like an alliance”, and that band narrows as relations between the two powers deteriorate.

This explains how hedging states typically talk: abstract positions, loosely worded commitments, specifics kept to bilateral channels. The vagueness is not an absence of position but a way of keeping room to manoeuvre. State a position plainly and there is nothing left to trade in the next round.

Is that the same as “strategic autonomy”?

No. The two point in opposite directions. Hedging looks for room between two existing poles; strategic autonomy aims to become a third pole that decides for itself. The first accepts dependence and manages it; the second tries to reduce the dependence itself.

The difference is clearest in where the money goes. Hedging spends on relationship maintenance: multilateral participation, bilateral agreements, balanced procurement. Autonomy spends on capability: domestic industry, sovereign critical technology, its own reach. One costs diplomatic effort, the other decades of industrial investment.

Multipolarity gets treated as the premise of both, but it is closer to a forecast than a strategy. If it materialises, the room for hedging widens; if it does not, hedging states find themselves standing in a gap that is closing. Betting on a world order that others will shape is itself a risk.

What keeps the posture standing?

Three conditions have to hold at once: both sides still want you, neither yet demands exclusivity, and you hold something both value. Lose any one and hedging starts to turn into procrastination.

The third matters most, and it is the most often overstated. Geography, energy corridors, critical minerals, and manufacturing bases all count, but their worth depends on the alternatives, and alternatives accumulate over time. A position that is irreplaceable today may in five years be merely convenient.

Cold War geographic concepts such as the Northern Tier still get invoked precisely because they describe this condition, in which the position itself is the leverage. Turkey’s durable place in NATO has rested not on policy alignment but on geography that could not be routed around. Once alternatives to Turkey’s corridor and airspace appear, the same position begins to carry less bargaining power.

What does hedging cost?

The cost is not paid at once. It builds up year by year, and most of it does not appear in any budget.

Intelligence and technology go first. Inside an alliance, the most sensitive material, such as signals intelligence, sensor parameters and weapons source code, is shared on the assumption that it will not reach a third party. A partner with deep ties to the other side moves down the list, and nobody says so out loud.

Next is reaction time in a crisis. Every part of a hedging posture has to be negotiated in advance; anything left unsettled has to be negotiated while the crisis unfolds. How fast a government can negotiate in the moment decides a great deal, and speed is exactly what hedging states have least of.

The hardest cost comes last: being distrusted by both. When hedging works, each side believes part of you belongs to them. When it fails, each believes you belong to the other. Sliding from the first to the second usually requires no mistake on your part, only that relations between the two powers deteriorate far enough.

The costs in the order they arrive, none of them on any budget line

Access to intelligence and sensitive technologyArrives first
Inside an alliance, the most sensitive material, such as signals intelligence, sensor parameters and weapons source code, is shared on the assumption that it will not reach a third party. A partner with deep ties to the other side moves down the list; nobody says so, and nothing records it.
Reaction time in a crisisDiscovered only in the event
Every part of a hedging posture has to be negotiated in advance; anything left unsettled has to be negotiated while the crisis unfolds. Speed of negotiation in the moment often decides the outcome, and it is precisely what hedgers have least of, because ambiguity means much was left unsettled.
Continuous maintenancePaid every year
Each relationship must be held in a narrow band between extracting benefits and appearing allied, and that band narrows as the two powers’ relations sour. Holding it costs diplomatic effort and domestic political capital, both finite and neither appearing in any budget line.
Distrusted by both at onceArrives last, hardest to undo
When hedging works, each side believes part of you belongs to them; when it fails, each believes you belong to the other. Sliding from the first to the second usually requires no mistake on your part, only that relations between the two powers deteriorate far enough, which is not yours to decide.

Early — depth of security cooperation goes firstOngoing — spent again every yearLate — very hard to reverse once it happens

The costs are sorted by when they arrive rather than by severity, because what they share is delay: none of them shows up at the moment of decision. The choice is made in year one and the invoices start arriving in year three, which makes hedging look almost costless at the point it is chosen.

None of them appears in a budget either. A place on a distribution list, the hours lost at the start of a crisis, the diplomatic effort spent each year: none is a line item, so none is easily audited afterwards. The last is the hardest to reverse, and its trigger is entirely external: it needs no mistake by the hedger, only that relations between the two powers deteriorate far enough.

Source: Impactful Creative, compiled from the costs described on this page and the glossary entries on middle-power hedging and strategic autonomy

What does this mean for Taiwan?

Taiwan is not a hedging state: its security and economic orientations are not split between two poles. Understanding hedging still matters, because many of Taiwan’s partners are hedgers, and that shapes what they will do when it counts.

In practice, what a hedging state will do is generally what it has already negotiated and can describe in non-exclusive language. With such partners, then, building arrangements into routine mechanisms is worth more than winning a single high-profile statement. Statements can be withdrawn; mechanisms are harder to undo.

The same logic works in reverse. When Taiwan assesses a partner’s commitment, the question is not what the partner said but what options it would still have if its relations with the other side deteriorated. A commitment is only as reliable as the cost of breaking it, however strong its wording.

Sources

Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Questions and answers on Switzerland's neutrality, 9 Sep 2022
European External Action Service (EEAS), Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe – A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign And Security Policy, Jun 2016
Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Near East Region; Iran; Iraq, Volume XII, 1. Editorial Note, 1991
U.S. Code (via Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute), 22 U.S. Code § 2753 - Eligibility for defense services or defense articles, 22 Oct 1968

Terms used here

Middle-power Hedging — Smaller states maintaining relationships with competing powers simultaneously, while deliberately compartmentalizing security cooperation from economic engagement: signing a defense treaty and opening facilities on one track, sustaining trade and infrastructure investment on the other. Far from indecision, the ability to avoid choosing is itself the strategic asset. For firms entering such markets, the task is identifying which sectors sit in the security compartment and which remain in the economic one; the rules differ entirely.
Strategic Autonomy — A state’s capacity to decide for itself on security, industry, and diplomacy without having its options set by a single partner it depends on. Pursuing autonomy rarely means leaving an alliance; more often it means building up domestic industry and technology while cultivating additional usable relationships alongside the existing one. For firms, the practical consequence is that the number of rule-setters multiplies: a single transaction may have to clear domestic industrial policy, an ally’s export controls, and a third party’s investment screening at once.
Multipolarity — An international system with several centers strong enough to set their own agendas, rather than one or two dominant powers. Multipolarity is often reduced to “the US retreats, China advances,” but the likelier pattern is security cooperation with one party, energy dealings with another, defense-industrial partners elsewhere, and open negotiating channels even with competitors. As bloc boundaries blur, firms face no fewer constraints, only more rule-setters who do not agree with one another.
Northern Tier — The Cold War containment line running along the Soviet southern flank from Turkey through Iran to Pakistan, institutionalized in the 1955 Baghdad Pact and its successor, the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). The United States never joined as a full member yet underwrote the arrangement. The axis is worth remembering because the same geography has reappeared in regional security architecture seventy years later; the difference is that outside powers designed the original, while regional states are building the new one themselves.